Sarah Swainson

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

When it comes to starting
something new, I usually have a few false starts and then hit on something. This
is normally the thing that has the most mileage; one of the biggest struggles
is keeping hold of my initial inspiration and being able to continue, so an
idea with lots of momentum is essential.

My characters are usually the
first thing that comes into my head, and then the story develops after this.
Sometimes it can be the other way round, or these things can come together; I think
everyone is different when it comes to the order of idea formation. I’ll begin
imagining something to be a certain way, and then the characters will develop
more and more complexities as it goes along, and then by the end of the
development process I might have something completely different to what I started
out with. It is a process of getting to know the characters, I suppose.

Sometimes my inspiration, as
negative as it may sound, can come from things I don’t like about the way
people have been betrayed in books I have read, for example, if I feel as
though someone has been unfairly treated or ridiculed by the author, I will
take inspiration from it and try to portray the character ‘type’ or situation
in a new light. This is true of my novella ‘To My Last Friend’. Obviously all
the plot and the characters are entirely my own, but it is manifesting your
feelings about something into your own work, which includes injecting it into
the story and the characters. I have read a fair few accounts in books regarding
the themes explored in ‘To My Last Friend’ where the characters have been very
brutally spoken of and treated. I don’t think it is fair to say that these
people are ‘disgusting’ or ‘corrupted’ or ‘evil’, or this eventuality isn't
possible, particularly after all the research, both primary and secondary, that
I have done.

Creating my characters is a good
balance between drawing from my own experience of life, but also from exploring
a little bit outside of that too. Research can be a costly thing; it can also
be free, but you have to be realistic and reasonable about your ideas.

Sometimes I actually think
authors should delve more into their own personal experience. Writing something
is like bringing something new to the table. Reading about the same sorts of
people and professions does get tiring sometimes, as negative as that might
also sound. I hate to sound negative. I’m sure there are some really good blog
posts about character diversity out there…

Like any business idea, it is
easy to be inspired by where others may have failed; characters can be a tool
to raise awareness about certain scenarios, or maybe a disability or obscure
illness that gets little media attention, but you think should have more
coverage than it does.

A balanced character is really,
really important too; I could write a book about the ‘Mary Sue/ Gary/ Marty Stu’
character, although admittedly there are some circumstances where this
character type is relevant. But in my particular line of work (general
fiction/drama) I like to avoid this. I don’t like to allow stereotypes in my
own work either, and also every character must include both negative and
positive traits, must do things right and also make mistakes. I like to leave
it up to the reader to decide who they identify with. There is no bad side;
this is no good side.

I would like to hear other author
comments on what inspires them when generating their own characters, and to
what degree they draw on their own personal life experience.

Wednesday, 18 December 2013

I've been writing this poem called starlight in the middle of the night: I do write poetry sometimes but not often; in fact this one isn't particularly typical of me but here we go. Tell me what you think maybe?

Wednesday, 27 November 2013

My Kindle Countdown deal for my eBook To My Last Friend begins tomorrow! (28th November) and will run until the 5th of December. myBook.to/tomylastfriend The eBook will be $0.99 on Amazon during this period of time. Also check it out on the Independent Author Network!: http://tiny.cc/4wxb6w

"At least it was love
we were showing initially, and not hatred and violence like you did in the end." - To My Last Friend

Monday, 18 November 2013

To my
last friend,

I thought about the impossible task I was faced with. I
had done everything in my power to succeed, but only a fool would have carried
on as the odds were completely against me. All had been set up from the very
start to go wrong, and there was no time, day or night, that I could rest
without thinking about the situation I had become trapped in, and the futility
of my efforts. Society did not want me, and could no longer abide by me,
because I was at the brink of my truth being discovered. I did not want to set my world alight, to
watch it burn because of the sister I had come to love too much.

I was not weak but I could not cope. I pleaded that I was
not a weak person. I used to be so good at denial, so good at forgetting. I
could no longer put aside the loss of any moral standing that I’d had; I should
have preserved my innocence, but instead I took a bite out of the apple, and it
turned bitter in my mouth. I had thought I had known what it was to be loved by
her, and to love her in return, but I was wrong.

All I ever wanted since the last bad day was to take
everything back and start again. All I wanted to do was reach out and pull time
into my chest, to make it young again, like an infant who belongs to their
parent. But time never wished to stay; time only wanted to grow up and leave
and find a place of its own where it could be out of my control.

I wrote this to myself because I wanted to remind myself
why I was going where I was going, and why I was going to do what I was going
to do. I wanted these thoughts to be racing through my mind as I took hold of
every thread in my life and tied them all into one neat knot.

I did
not know why I was brought into a world that was starved of love, but where my
love was unwelcome.

The times I had loved and been loved I could no longer
bear to think of again.

All that was left to be done was to give my apologies,
and so for every grave mistake I was sorry, and I hoped that one day my memory
would be so far in the past that she would no longer be able to count out my
faults.